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<h2>Acequias</h2> 
By Sarah Wise and Andrew Crooks
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<p>Water management is a major concern across the world.  Irrigation-based agriculture draws especially heavily on clean water resources; however, irrigation systems must be maintained, a task individual agriculturalists cannot bear alone. 

<p>We have constructed an agent-based model to investigate the significant interaction and cumulative impact of the physical water system, local social and institutional structures which regulate water use, and the real estate market on the sustainability of traditional farming as a lifestyle in the northern New Mexico area. The regional term for the coupled social organization and physical system of irrigation is <i>acequias</i>. 

<p>Preliminary results show that depending on the future patterns of weather and government regulations, acequia-based farming may either continue at near current rates, shrink significantly but continue to exist, or disappear altogether. 

